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By Mel Seesholtz, Ph.D.

â€œWhen religion loses its credibilityâ€ was the title of a USA Todayarticle by Christian writer Oliver Thomas. The articleâ€™s lead posed the question: â€œGalileo was persecuted for revealing what we now know to be the truth regarding Earthâ€™s place in our solar system. Today, the issue is homosexuality, and the persecution is not of one man but of millions. Will Christian leaders once again be on the wrong side of history?â€

Mr. Thomas rephrased and answered the question:

What if Christian leaders are wrong about homosexuality? I suppose, much as a newspaper maintains its credibility by setting the record straight, church leaders would need to do the same:

Correction: Despite what you might have read, heard or been taught throughout your churchgoing life, homosexuality is, in fact, determined at birth and is not to be condemned by God's followers.

Based on a few recent headlines, we wonâ€™t be seeing that admission anytime soonâ€¦
Religionâ€™s only real commodity, after all, is its moral authority. Lose that, and we lose our credibility. Lose credibility, and we might as well close up shop.

Itâ€™s happened to Christianity before, most famously when we dug in our
heels over Galileoâ€™s challenge to the biblical view that the Earth,
rather than the sun, was at the center of our solar system. â€¦

This time, Christianity is in danger of squandering its moral authority
by continuing its pattern of discrimination against gays and lesbians
in the face of mounting scientific evidence that sexual orientation has
little or nothing to do with choice. To the contrary, whether sexual
orientation arises as a result of the motherâ€™s hormones or the childâ€™s
brain structure or DNA, it is almost certainly an accident of birth.
The point is this: Without choice, there can be no moral culpability.

The hateful antigay politics of the radical Christian Right have alienated a lot of people of genuine
faith, and for good reason. As C. S. Lewis warned, Christians who uses
their faith as a means to a political end corrupt their faith.

The American public is turning â€“ slowly but surely â€“ against
hate-mongers who advocate discrimination in the name of religion. A
recent Opinion Dynamics/Fox News poll documented that â€œ60 percent of
Americans favored some form of legal recognition for gay unions, 30
percent favored gay marriage, and 30 percent favored civil unions.â€
This should not be surprising. Throughout American history, civil
equality has inevitably trumped bigotry and discrimination, even when
the bigotry and discrimination had the stamp of approval from some
â€œChristianâ€ leaders as in the days of slavery and legal racial
discrimination.

When the poll was reported in a propaganda organ of James Dobson and his perversely named â€œFocus on the Family,â€ the usual spin was applied by a Dobsonian acolyte:
â€œJim Pfaff, cofounder of Colorado Family Action, said the survey was
reported with bias. â€˜It says here that 30 percent of people want to
allow same-sex couples to get legally married,â€™ he told Family News in
Focus, â€˜but it doesnâ€™t talk about the fact that 70 percent donâ€™t.â€™â€

Of course Mr. Pfaff conveniently forgot to mention the additional 30
percent of respondents that supported civil unions for gay and lesbian
couples, something Colorado Family Action and Focus on the Family vehemently oppose despite the fact that legally recognized civil unions would benefit not only gay and lesbian Americans, but their children and their families. Hypocrisy, the desire to demean others, and dogmatic sophistry always go hand-in-hand-in-hand as was so well illustrated in an article that appeared in another Dobson-FOF publication.

At least part of the articleâ€™s title was accurate: Jesus said nothing about homosexuality. But Mr. Dallas mastered the art of sophistry in his apologia for antigay dogma.

Already distressed by reality â€“ â€œa recent poll showed 66 percent
(two-thirds) of Americans no longer believe there is such a thing as
â€˜absolute truth.â€™ More disturbing, though, was the fact that 53 percent
of those not believing in absolute truth identified themselves as
born-again Christians; 75 percent of whom were mainline Protestantsâ€ â€“
Mr. Dallas directed his sophism at gay Christians:

Invariably, when the â€œgay Christianâ€ movement is represented, someone
in their group will hold up a sign saying, â€œWHAT JESUS SAID ABOUT
HOMOSEXUALITY: ________________.â€ The idea, of course, is that if Jesus
did not specifically forbid a behavior, then the behavior must not have
been important to Him. Stretching the point further, this argument
assumes if Jesus was not manifestly concerned about something, neither
should we.

Troy Perry (along with most gay Christian leaders) makes much of this
argument based on silence: â€œAs for the question, â€˜What did Jesus say
about homosexuality?â€™, the answer is simple. Jesus said nothing. Not
one thing. Nothing! Jesus was more interested in love.â€ [Troy Perry, Donâ€™t Be Afraid Anymore (New York: St. Martinâ€™s Press, 1990), p. 40.]

To refute Troy Perry and like-minded Christians, Mr. Dallas offered
four â€œreasonsâ€ why a theology based on love and inclusion should be
replaced by the dogma of hate and exclusion. His first â€œreasonâ€
addressed the fact that Jesus said nothing about homosexuality:

the argument assumes the gospels are more authoritative than the rest
of the books in the Bible. The idea of a subject being unimportant just
because it was not mentioned by Jesus is foreign to the gospel writers
themselves. At no point did Matthew, Mark, Luke or John say their books
should be elevated above the Torah or, for that matter, any writings
yet to come. In other words, the gospels â€“ and the teachings they
contain â€“ are not more important than the rest of the Bible. All
Scripture is given by inspiration of God. The same Spirit inspiring the
authors of the gospels also inspired the men who wrote the rest of the
Bible.

If all thatâ€™s so, then why isnâ€™t Mr. Dallas campaigning to have those
who wear clothing made of two different threads stoned to death as
demanded in Leviticus, or to have non-virgin brides stoned to death as
demanded in Deuteronomy? And for â€œGodâ€™sâ€ sake, why isnâ€™t he campaigning
to repeal the 19th Amendment to the U.S. Constitution
so as to fulfill St. Paulâ€™s edict in First Timothy to â€œsuffer not a
woman to teach, nor to usurp authority over the man, but to be in
silenceâ€?

His second â€œreasonâ€ was equally self-serving and suffered from the same
convoluted sophistry: â€œNot only are the gospels no more authoritative
than the rest of Scripture, they are not comprehensive either. That is,
they do not provide all we need to know by way of doctrine and
practical instruction. Some of the Bibleâ€™s most important teachings, in
fact, do not appear in the gospels. â€¦â€

Indeed, the â€œgospelsâ€ were cobbled together decades, sometimes
centuries after Jesusâ€™ death. The resulting texts were then either
sanctioned or shunned by men whose sole
purpose was to create a religion and its dogma that would control
people and have them do and believe as they were told to by the
hierarchy of the institution.

Spirituality is intrapersonal. For most itâ€™s a personally liberating
and uplifting experience, an encouragement to grow and evolve to more
conscious perceptions. But when personal spirituality is organized into
a religion, an institution is produced and as all institutions it
produces a hierarchy who produce dogma that often has little to do with
spirituality and everything to do with maintaining social and political
control.

The third â€œreasonâ€ Mr. Dallas offered was of a kind: â€œThe gospels do
not profess to be a complete account of Jesusâ€™ life or teachings. Whole
sections of His early years are omitted; much of what He did and said remains unknownâ€ [italics added].

Itâ€™s historical fact that the â€œgospelsâ€ and other â€œsacred textsâ€ were
sanitized (if not completely excluded) by early Church fathers before
what we now call â€œthe Bibleâ€ was canonized. For example, all references
to or mention of Jesusâ€™ sexuality were expunged. Any references to
possible siblings were also deleted. But such information remains
extant in â€œunapprovedâ€ texts such as the Gospel of Thomas, written by a man some believe was Jesusâ€™ sibling, as well as in other so-called â€œgnostic texts.â€
Alas, such records just didnâ€™t fit the official dogma â€œThe Churchâ€
wanted and needed to create for its own social and political purposes.

The fourth â€œreasonâ€ Mr. Dallas offers begs the question of civil
equality for gay and lesbian American citizens and diverts attention to
procreation: â€œJesus referred in the most specific of terms to Godâ€™s
created intent for human sexuality: â€˜But at the beginning of creation
God â€˜made them male and female. For this reason a man will leave his
father and mother and be united to his wife, and the two will become
one flesh.â€™ So they are no longer two, but one. Therefore what God has
joined together, let man not separateâ€™ (Mark 10:6-9).â€

Thereâ€™s that pesky biblical interdiction against divorce again. If he
were true to his espoused beliefs, Mr. Dallas would be campaigning to
have divorce made illegal. Despite that glaring inconsistency, surely
even Mr. Dallas would acknowledge that people â€“ including devout
Christians â€“ have sex for pleasure with no intent to procreate. And
just as surely that pleasure was also part of â€œGodâ€™s created intent for
human sexualityâ€ otherwise why would Divinity have made sex so
pleasurable, not to mention making it one of humansâ€™ most basic,
fundamental instincts? To suggest the pleasures of sex were a divine
test of faith conjures a rather mean-spirited â€œGodâ€ who enjoys
torturing his creations.

Mr. Dallas and those who share his anti-human, anti-pleasure views on sexuality might want to read Vatsyayanaâ€™s Kamasutram (aka â€œKama Sutraâ€).
But then again, theyâ€™d probably view such a work as anti-Christian
hedonism, so perhaps they should just stick to reading the Wife of
Bathâ€™s prologue in The Canterbury Tales. She addressed their concerns most astutely and from a Christian perspective.

Instead of concocting sophomoric, self-contradictory arguments to
support discrimination and propagate hate, James Dobson, Jim Pfaff, Joe
Dallas and the rest of the dour dogmatists of the Christian Right might
want to join the twenty-first century and embrace its diverse human
community instead of trying to factionalize it to enhance their own
power and profit.